Wheels
by Hatcheter
Summary: "When the cat's away the mice will play." And when Misato leaves her most valuable possession unprotected, an adventuresome redhead and her unwilling sidekick have the ride of their lives.


Disclaimer: I don't own Evangelion, I just write fics based on it.  
  
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WHEELS  
  
~  
  
Asuka stood at the apartment's front door and yelled. "Come on, Baka! It will be your fault if Tokyo-3 is destroyed because we're late!"  
  
Seconds later, Shinji emerged from his bedroom. He hopped down the hall on one foot, trying to pull a sock onto the other. He had it half on when he hit an errant beer can. Shinji did a perfect belly flop on the hall floor.   
  
Asuka shook her head. "Sheist, Third Children. Some savior of humanity you are."  
  
"Sorry." Shinji crawled the last meter to the doorway, and yanked the sock on properly. He slipped on his shoes and hopped to his feet, and followed Asuka out the door. "Since when do Angels attack at night?" he muttered.  
  
"Baka. They are our enemy; we can't try to reason what they do. They could come at three a.m. if they wanted to, though I hope not. You'd never be ready in time if they did."  
  
"It's not my fault I fell asleep at my desk. You didn't have to hit me with my math book, you know."  
  
"I had to make sure you were up," Asuka answered. She hit the call button for the elevator. Fortunately, it was on their floor, and opened immediately. They stepped inside and Shinji reached for the button to take them to the lobby. Asuka slapped his hand away, and pressed the garage level button.  
  
"What are you..." Shinji trailed off when he saw Asuka twirling a set of keys on her finger, smiling devilishly. It took only a second for him to put the pieces together. Misato was away, at another NERV facility. She had been picked up from the apartment. Her car was still in the building's garage.  
  
"No. You can't be serious."  
  
"We don't know when the trains will run at this time of night. This will be the quickest way to get to the Geofront."  
  
"But...we don't have drivers licenses."  
  
Asuka's grin widened. "We're Evangelion Pilots. That sort of thing doesn't matter for us."  
  
Shinji was running out of arguments. "I don't know how to drive."  
  
Asuka's widened her stance, placing one hand in her hip. Shinji knew exactly what was coming next. "Baka! You're with the great Asuka Soryu Langley! This is no challenge for me."  
  
Shinji fired his last salvo, knowing it was a lost cause. "It's a bad idea."  
  
"No it's not. Now come on." Asuka promptly drug her fellow pilot out of the elevator and across the garage, to the waiting blue sports car. Shinji climbed into the passenger seat and buckled his seat belt, pulling it as tight as he could. He braced one hand on the door, and the other on the dashboard in front of him.  
  
Asuka buckled her own seatbelt, and inserted the key into the ignition. She turned it, and the car bucked forward and stalled, jolting both passengers. Shinji glared at Asuka, who looked confused for a moment. "Heh. It's a manual transmission. I guess I forgot that."  
  
"Forgot?!" Shinji immediately reached for the handle on his door. "Let's go, right now. The train will be fast enough for us to get to the Geofront."  
  
"Don't be silly," said Asuka. She pressed the clutch in, took the car out of gear, and then turned the key. The engine started smoothly, roaring to life. "See? No problem."  
  
Asuka put the car into reverse and gently let the clutch out. The car inched back slowly, out of the parking slot.  
  
Shinji looked at his redheaded chauffer. "Asuka?" She was concentrating hard, and didn't acknowledge him. "Asuka?" Still nothing. He tapped her arm. "Asuka?"  
  
"WHAT?!"  
  
"We'll go faster if you release the parking brake."  
  
She looked down at the handle, sticking up in the air between them. Asuka stared at it for a moment, turning red behind the ears. "I know that!" she yelled, before shifting into her instructor mode. "You can never be too cautious when backing out, especially in these tight confines. You notice that we could still move. Leaving the brake on let me have better control of the speed. See? Where already out."  
  
Shinji didn't begin to buy that answer, but didn't say anything. They were out of the parking spot, after all. Asuka let the brake off, shifted into first, and gunned the engine. The car stalled again. "Oops." Asuka restarted, and released the clutch slower. The car actually went forward, to the garage's exit, some eight meters away. "Here we go!" shouted Asuka.  
  
She checked for traffic, and pulled onto the street. Ahead of them, the buildings of downtown Tokyo-3 were retracting into the ground. With all the civilians heading to their shelters, the streets were empty. Asuka pressed down on the accelerator, waiting until it was time to shift to second gear. She figured that should be when the tachometer needle was somewhere in the red part.  
  
Once it reached that point, Asuka hit the clutch and shifted into second. And stalled, again.  
  
Shinji held his head in his hands, wincing. "Would you stop that? My neck is going to be broken before we even get there."  
  
"Shut up, baka. This isn't as easy as Misato makes it look."  
  
"We can still take the train."  
  
Asuka slapped the back of his head, which was conveniently exposed. "Baka! If she can drive this piece of junk while drunk, then I can certainly do it."  
  
Shinji whimpered in pain, unable to argue.  
  
Asuka started the car again, and managed to get into second gear, and then third. She went to fourth when Shinji pointed out that Misato never ran it in the red for so long. Actually, she hardly ever let the needle reach the red, but Shinji couldn't convince Asuka of that.  
  
Shinji spent the rest of the trip with his eyes firmly shut. Asuka had a genuine case of lead-foot-itis, and had also discovered fifth gear. Not even Misato drove this fast through Tokyo-3. The car came to a screeching halt, during which Shinji's whole life flashed before his eyes. It was depressingly dull, and short enough that he got an encore presentation of it.  
  
When he realized he wasn't dead, he opened his eyes to see a massive door with the NERV logo. "What are you waiting for?" he asked, turning to Asuka.  
  
Her knuckles were white from gripping the wheel so tightly, and she was panting lightly. "Isn't this the car train? What's supposed to happen now?"  
  
Shinji looked around. "Yeah, this is it. Misato usually calls ahead and has a train waiting for her."  
  
"Well why didn't you tell me that before?" she yelled.  
  
"I thought I wouldn't live long enough to worry about it!" he yelled back.  
  
Right on cue, the door opened, revealing the car train, and saving both teens a lot of hot air. Asuka drove forward and shut the car off. The trip down to the Geofront passed in silence. When the train reached the bottom, she started the engine again, and drove to NERV headquarters.   
  
The entered the parking garage, and began searching for Misato's reserved parking spot. "I think it's that way," said Shinji, pointing left while Asuka turned right.   
  
"We'll see about that, Third Children." Five minutes later, after scouring the right half of the garage, Asuka drove over to the left side. Five more minutes searching failed to reveal the elusive reserved parking spot.  
  
"Maybe it's on the upper level?" asked Shinji.  
  
"Upper level?" Asuka stared at him for a moment. She blinked, shifting modes again. "Why didn't you say that before?!" she roared.   
  
"Sorry! I didn't think about it."  
  
"BAKA! We're definitely late now."  
  
"We would have been fine if we had taken the train."  
  
"SHUT - UP!"  
  
It only took eight more minutes to find the parking spot. As soon as the engine was off, Shinji all but tore the door off in his rush to get out. He didn't slow down until there was a dozen meters between him and the vehicle of terror. "I'll never complain about Misato's driving again," he muttered to himself.  
  
"Hey, baka, wait for me," called Asuka, running to catch up. "See, we got here just fine. There was nothing to be worried about."  
  
Shinji stayed silent as they boarded the elevator. A few minutes later, it opened again, depositing them on the floor with their lockers. Dr. Ritsuko Akagi stood outside the locker room doors, holding a stopwatch. She pressed the button as soon as the two children reached her. "Thirty-seven minutes. Not very good, kids. If this were a real emergency, an Angel could have done extensive damage to the city by now."  
  
Shinji and Asuka stared dumbly at the doctor. "Real...emergency?" Shinji finally muttered.  
  
The doctor nodded happily. "We decided to push up the monthly evacuation drill a few days, to see how you two would do without Misato to drive you in." Maya stepped forward and handed a report to the doctor. "The Eva's were ready in less than ten minutes. I guess Misato really can get you here quicker than the train can. We'll probably have to arrange dedicated transportation for you when she's not around..." the doctor continued talking as she walked away from the children, with Maya in tow.  
  
They stared after her for a moment. Asuka's eye began to twitch. "It was a drill?"  
  
Realization dawned on Shinji, much to late to be useful. "Hey, Hikari announced this in class earlier this week, didn't she?"  
  
Asuka began to visibly shake. "It...was...a...drill."  
  
Scared, Shinji inched away from her. "Asuka?"  
  
"IT WAS A STUPID DRILL!" The red head spun and punched a wall. "This is all your fault, baka!"  
  
Shinji paled. "Me? Why?"  
  
"I don't know, but it must be!" Shinji hadn't gotten far enough yet. Asuka reached out and grabbed his collar, dragging him back to the elevator. They passed Makoto and Shigeru, who watched the two disappear.  
  
"Poor boy," said Shigeru.  
  
Makoto nodded. "You said it."  
  
When the elevator opened up in the garage, Shinji was turning blue in the face, and trying to release Asuka's constrictor like grip on is collar. The girl was too furious to notice, and would probably have just drug Shinji behind her if he passed out. Fortunately, they reached the car before that happened. She released him, where he collapsed on the ground, sucking in huge lungfuls of air.  
  
When he finally got to his feet, he saw Asuka standing by the door, staring into the car. Shinji walked around and stood next to her. Inside the locked car, the keys hung from the ignition, right where they were left.  
  
Shinji turned to Asuka. "Can we please take the train now?"  
  
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I tried to keep Shinji and Asuka mostly in charcter here. I think I succeeded. Please review this, no matter whether you liked or hated it.   
  
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Begun: 08/03/03   
  
Finished: 08/04/03 


End file.
